


your entire future

by Kyra



Category: Almost Famous (2000)
Genre: 1960s, First Job, Flight Attendant, Gen, Growing Up, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-10
Updated: 2008-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 08:08:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyra/pseuds/Kyra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She gets her uniform, her wings, a rolling suitcase of her own. Heels that clack up and down the jetway. Hundreds of miles between her and her mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your entire future

**Author's Note:**

> Written January 2008.

_Listen to Tommy with a candle burning and you will see your entire future._

==

 _Madison, St. Paul, Duluth._ She gets her uniform, her wings, a rolling suitcase of her own. Heels that clack up and down the jetway. Hundreds of miles between her and her mother.

 _Kansas City, San Antonio, Des Moines_. She gets spit on by her first passenger. The co-pilot gives her a scornful look when he catches her crying. Shelley, a girl from Jackson, Mississippi with a honey-colored accent hooks her arm through Anita's and tells her they're going to be best friends.

 _Tampa, Atlanta, Huntsville._ She and Shelley get switched to different routes. She sends William a postcard with the lyrics to Simon  & Garfunkel's America on the back. In a hotel bar she meets Jack, who becomes the second guy she's ever slept with, after Darryl. "Gotta ship right out again, right?" he says afterward, laughing. "That's the way I like my girls, gone in the morning."

 _Roanoke, Pittsburgh, Boston._ No one knows it's her birthday; there's icy rain in Boston and turbulence when they take off. "San Diego," she says, when a passenger asks where home is. It feels far.

**

On her first day at stewardess training, Anita leaned over to the girl next to her, thinking gleefully of all the things her mom wouldn't approve of if she were here: the nylons she's wearing (tools of the patriarchy), the white flour in the muffin she just ate (poisoning her body), the chemicals in her hairspray (destroying the earth).

"I am so glad to be here," she said. "If I didn't get out of my house I was going to go crazy."

"Tell me about it," said the girl, who was blonde and skinny. "Hey, can you tell how much makeup I have on?" she said, lowering her voice. "My stepdad gave me the worst black eye last week."

"... no," said Anita. "Nope, it looks great."


End file.
